Democrats called it “terrible” and “mean-spirited,” while advocates for the poor said a Senate
GOP plan to require some welfare applicants to submit to drug tests would further stigmatize the
needy and produce very few benefits.

“What about the public dollars that go to corporate interests, those who receive millions, in
many cases, of public funds. Do we test them? Where do you end this?” said Sen. Charleta B.
Tavares, D-Columbus. “There is no evidence that poor people, those who receive some sort of public
assistance, have higher rates of drug abuse.”

Among several changes yesterday to the wide-ranging policy bill known as the mid-biennium
review, Senate Republicans proposed a three-county, two-year program where welfare applicants who
are suspected of having a drug problem would have to submit to and pay for drug tests before
receiving benefits.

Those who pass would be reimbursed the cost of the test. Those who fail could not get benefits
for at least six months.

The move appears to be part of a renewed national GOP movement to require drug testing for
welfare recipients. Though the courts have come down on testing programs in Michigan and Florida,
revised laws have been introduced this session in about 30 states, and lawmakers in Georgia, Utah,
Oklahoma, Tennessee and Louisiana have moved legislation in recent weeks.

Yesterday, a Michigan legislative committee passed a three-county test program, similar to Ohio’s
. A bill pending in Indiana also would set up a two-year program in three counties.

Sen. Tim Schaffer, R-Lancaster, brought the idea to Ohio in a bill that had just one hearing.
Senate GOP leaders then included it in the mid-biennium review, which is scheduled for a full
Senate vote this afternoon.

Senate Minority Leader Eric Kearney, D-Cincinnati, said the proposal criminalizes the poor and
was “probably done as a publicity stunt.”

Senate President Tom Niehaus, R-New Richmond, said the pilot program would be a measured
step.

“This is about protecting taxpayer dollars,” he said. “We do not want, in any sense of the word,
to criminalize the poor. That is not our intent.”

Republicans say they want to keep public dollars away from drug dealers. “That’s a question of
enforcement,” Kearney said. “You’re not supposed to use welfare benefits for drugs, so arrest the
people who aren’t doing it properly. But you don’t drug-test everyone because a few people are
being knuckleheads.”

Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks,
asked lawmakers why they are singling out benefits that account for less than 0.5 percent of the
state budget with a drug-testing program that has not shown any savings or definitive benefits in
other states.

Fugitt said children make up more than 75 percent of the participants in Ohio’s welfare program,
known as Ohio Works First, which gives monthly cash assistance of $177 per person.

The proposal, Fugitt said, is “based on false assumptions” and the myth that people on welfare
are “making a living on the government dime and using our taxpayer dollars to buy drugs.”

Eugene King, director of the Ohio Poverty Law Center, said mandatory drug tests will cause the
public to “take an even dimmer view of benefits recipients.”

“If we stigmatize them and make it harder for them to get employment, then we’re being
counterproductive,” he said.

Sen. Chris Widener, R-Springfield, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said starting the
tests on a small scale will allow everyone to collect good data.

“If it is a pilot project, isn’t that the time and place to see if such a thing can be done with
no or minimal impact?” he asked King. Later, he said he’s heard comments from local job and family
services officials that lead him to believe there are questions about drug use among benefit
recipients “that a pilot project would help us answer.”

The plan got lukewarm responses from House Speaker William G. Batchelder, R-Medina, and Gov.
John Kasich.

“That’s something that has been discussed often,” Batchelder said. “Ordinarily there is a
sufficient negative reaction that it hasn’t gone forward.”

Kasich said a limited three-county test is better than a “massive statewide program.”

“I don’t know if they’ve had full hearings in there or if they’ve considered all the
ramifications of this,” he said. “I just heard about this going in, and we’ll see where this thing
goes.”

Among other changes to the mid-biennium review:

• Allows the classroom portion of drivers education to be completed online.

• Keeps an extra $30 million the House added for nursing homes and allows them to qualify for
two bonuses for meeting new quality standards.

• Removes a House-added provision that would have blocked the automatic transfer of state
surplus money from going into the rainy-day fund.

• Places new limits on the prescribing of drugs that contain tramadol, a painkiller used to
treat a variety of issues, including rheumatoid arthritis.